


The Gift

by IronT



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Gen, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-15
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-03-16 10:33:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29452371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IronT/pseuds/IronT
Summary: FeralG4 asked for a story about a more wealthy and more powerful North, so I gave it a think, and this is what I came up with!Domeric Bolton survives Ramsay, and is instead sent to the free city of Norvos for a time, while his father 'fixes' the Ramsay issue.He returns to the North with horses.
Relationships: Domeric Bolton & Roose Bolton, Domeric Bolton/Sansa Stark
Comments: 3
Kudos: 23





	The Gift

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FeralG4](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FeralG4/gifts).



Roose Bolton

Roose’s son had wanted to meet his brother, so Roose sent his son away for two years. Two years in Norvos serving a merchant who traded Norvoshi grain for Bolton wood and furs. The boy had argued, but he had obeyed. Roose sent twenty steady men with his son, and another forty up the Weeping Water, to see his bastard. 

_I want to know my brother,_ his son said.

_Your brother is a poison. That is all you need to know of him,_ Roose told him, and sent him away to be sure he listened. To be doubly sure, he’d had his bastard beheaded. 

Two years passed. His bastard’s bones hung from the gate of the Dreadfort, and his son was returning home 

He had received a raven from Widow’s Watch, from the Flints. Ships flying a Bolton sail had been seen along the coast, heading for the mouth of the Weeping Water. 

Few things in life made the lord of the Dreadfort smile, but word of his son’s return had set a thin cheery line across Lord Bolton’s face. His servants, apprehensive of their master’s change in character, hid away from him, skulking in the larder and the kitchens. None could imagine Roose Bolton smiling for anything other than the promise of cruelty. 

Four days after the sighting of his ships passing Widow’s Watch, a man, one of Roose’s house men, brought word of a great column of horses and riders making for the Dreadfort through the Hornwood. The man had not gotten close enough to identify the riders, but he claimed to have seen the flayed man of the Bolton’s flying high on a pinioned banner at the head of the column. The men had worn strange clothes, the man had said, bagged trousers dyed with bright reds and blues and fur lined cloaks dyed a dusty black. Their horses were strongly built and shaggy haired, barrel bodied and of a hundred hues. The riders were armed, and they bore long lances or curved swords, and carried small shields, though none wore armor.

Roose waited on the walls that day. It was mid evening, and biting cold, before his patience was finally rewarded. Riders could be seen from the red brick walls of the Dreadfort. A hundred men, and near six hundred horses in a great herd, riding hard for the fortress. He had sent the boy away with twenty men, and his son returned with a hundred. 

At the head of the column, his son rode a horse black as midnight. The Bolton banner streamed behind him as he galloped ahead of his men, who whooped and hollered, and spurred on their own horses.

His son rode into the Dreadfort alone, through the tunnel gate beneath the bastion wall, and wheeled his horse in a long canter around the castle yard. Servants scampered out of the way, and Roose’s men stamped their feet and whistled. Domeric Bolton paraded his horse once more around the yard, before coming to a stop at the steps of the keep. He dismounted and bound up the steps towards his father.

“I am home, father.” He knelt on the stones at Roose’s feet. “I come bearing gifts from my time in Norvos.”

“Stand,” Roose said. 

His son rose.

The boy was a little taller, and a little less pale than he had been two years ago. He wore wide legged breeches of bright red, and a tunic of blue. His cloak was bear fur, and he wore a pair of high leather riding boots that made a soft tapping upon the stone steps. A curved sword hung in a scabbard at his waist, its forward cross guard curved downward into a steel plate to cover the hand. His son’s face was still thin, angular, and all Bolton. He wore his dark hair pulled back into a horse's tail, bound tight with a dark cord. A short, fat scar cut his high cheekbones, another across his left eyebrow, and third over his nose. 

“Welcome home.” Roose was not an affectionate man. His wife claimed she could count on the fingers of her hands the times he had hugged his son. But he hugged Domeric then, and his son returned his embrace with a fierce hold.

His arm around his son’s shoulders, Roose walked with his son down into the castle yard.

“What have you brought me?” He asked.

“Norvoshi steppe riders, father,” Domeric said as they passed beneath the castle gates, “and six hundred head of Norvoshi horses.”

Beyond the gates, Domeric’s riders had allowed the herd of horses to fan out across the wide fields that encircled the Dreadfort. 

“They will not freeze in a northern winter, and they can live in land harder and less welcoming than even our grimmest moor.” Domeric pointed to two mares, a bay and a dun, who cantered after one another across the field. “They can run ten leagues without rest, and can outrun any horse you’d care to put against them.”

“Impressive animals.” Roose said.

“Worth ten times their weight in gold,” Domeric replied. “I brought them home to make a herd of them here.”

“How did you get ahold of so many of these beasts, if they are worth so much?” Roose asked. “Surely you did not buy them?”

Domeric shook his head, and his grey eyes glimmered. There was a cleverness in the boy’s eyes, and a wicked playfulness. The boy was all Bolton. 

“I took them,” Domeric said. “From a horse merchant.”

“You took them?” Roose’s lip curled upwards. “And this merchant, he just let them go?”

“Well…” Domeric smiled at his father and ran a hand across the hilt of his sword. “He did take some convincing.”

Roose laughed. He laughed, long, and loud, and the men of the Dreadfort whispered of the laughter for many days after. 

**Author's Note:**

> References and inspirations for this fic are as follows:
> 
> https://worldofmartialarts.pro/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Kazak1.jpg  
> https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/90/J%C3%B3zef_Brandt_-_Wesele_kozackie.jpg  
> https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1a/J%C3%B3zef_Brandt_-_Powr%C3%B3t_zwyci%C4%99zc%C3%B3w.jpg  
> https://i.pinimg.com/originals/b7/07/73/b707738b3d2b32d81ff266fe808a7c96.jpg
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongolian_horse


End file.
